


insatiable

by iimpavid



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Bloodborne Fusion, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Crushes, Gen, Groundhog Day, Names
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-04
Updated: 2019-04-04
Packaged: 2020-01-04 13:55:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18345023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iimpavid/pseuds/iimpavid
Summary: the one where Peter Nureyev is an unknowable extraplanar entity.





	insatiable

**Author's Note:**

> Sam wanted a Bloodborne AU and true to form I then spat out this wee glimpse into that possible future. The tags make this seem so much Worse than it is.

The seabed was dark but not silent. Some hundred million lifetimes thought out into a hundred million shards like glimmering glass in the dark only to be tumbled to smooth pebbles beneath the currents.   
  
_Its inventor doesn't want it for himself, black inside and cold_ \--   
  
They are bright under tongues, tucked sable soft into cheeks, tasting of salt or blood.   
__  
_The man who bought it doesn't need it-_ -   
  
They taste the same until they congeal, one slicing into soft gum meat the other sticking soft between teeth like hunger.   
  
_The man who needs it doesn't know_ \--   
  
There is a hunter. There is always a hunter and they carry with them such trinkets and treats and they are never delightful by themselves... until they are dying. Even then they are dull in their repetition, losing shine with constant abrasion because dying is never so interesting after the first time. He makes do.

But _this_ one.    
  
This one is made furious by the dying. He put it all sorts of places, steered it in any direction but he was alway so angry that the choice of it wasn't his. It was never any less--   
  
_ He burns so bright. _   
  
Form feels foreign and fades faster than it can be grasped. A few lifetimes more and the thief  _almost_ gets it right. Vaporous. Too long in the tooth, too many teeth in the jaw. Eyes that will not remain binary-- they split and blacken and creep across skin if he doesn't pay careful attention to corralling them. And worse: how it hurts to be so small. Burns like blisters on the insides of his skin, he forgot what it was like to have skin, to be confined to muscle and brittle, breaking bone in a body that cracks with every too-hasty step.   
  
But it's worth it.

It's worth it to kneel over the dying hunter and press a patient palm into the bloody cavern left of his stomach. To inhale and force lungs and larynx and lips to open. To in too many voices  say out loud to him _ : _

"Something tells me that trying the same thing for the umpteenth time won't yield different results. But what do I know? Maybe you enjoy exsanguination?"

* * *

“ _Who the hell are you_?” The hunter is never not-angry and this moment is no different; the thief could eat him alive if that didn't mean killing him.

“That’s hardly a fair question; you’re the interloper in my home after all. Don’t you think you should introduce your _ self _ first?” 

They go back and forth like that for a while. It might be years or just a few hours until finally, the hunter relents, “Juno! My name’s Juno Steel, alright. Now, what’s yours?” 

The grin split every face of him in two and ruptured out from the plane on which the hunter,  _ Juno _ , existed. 

It took weeks to coagulate again.The rapture was too great.

_ Juno. Juno. Juno Juno Juno JunoJunoJunoJuno _JunoJunoJunoJuno_ - _

The name sang in every fiber of him warm and bloody and bright in every mouth, soft-lipped and gentle-fanged. He could consume it, yes, but why? It lasted so much longer held close. _Such a gift he’s been given_.

* * *

 

He wasn’t always so monstrous but he was always a thief. Unsatiated hunger in the undercity had grown up into the malaise of dissatisfaction with its surface. He devoured himself, then, in anger and in fear and in desperation and what was left became what he is now: hungry still, but better.

Better _enough_ , anyway, to keep  _ Juno Steel _ company on the long hunt. 

The thief limned along the edges of light caught on the barrel of Juno’s gun and the sinuous shadows trailing behind his coat. Content to share a shade of reality beside him again and again and again-- as many times as it needed to take.

**Author's Note:**

> Validate meeeeee


End file.
